save the last dance for me
by vega-de-la-lyre
Summary: All she’s aware of is the music and his eyes and for one heady heartbeat-long moment it is almost like they are dancing. McCoy/Chapel.


i.

Christine thinks that Kirk perhaps chose the wrong planet for shore leave.

The club is hot and smoky and stinking, a wild sweaty crush of alien and human bodies, and there is an edge to the air that she doesn't trust and she is catching glimpses of too many people accessorized with wicked-looking weapons, but the pounding beat of the music throbs up through her toes, into her chest, and it's too much to attempt thinking right now. McCoy leans down to shout something into her ear but she can't hear him and she just shakes her head at him, grinning, shading her eyes against the sickening pulse of the orange-and-blue lights.

Someone large and furry but vaguely humanoid staggers into Christine, and she nearly falls, but McCoy grabs her wrist, puts a hand to the small of her back and pulls her close, out of the line of danger. She looks up at him breathlessly, pushing her damp hair out of her eyes, and she is pushed up close again him by another clumsy idiot and she puts her hand on his chest to sturdy herself and all she's aware of is the music and his eyes and for one heady heartbeat-long moment it is almost like they are dancing —

(Of course, the moment is promptly blown all to hell when a gang of armed thugs suddenly storms the club and the _Enterprise_ crew finds themselves in the middle of a bloody coup, and they never mention it again, but still: it was nice while it lasted.)

* * *

ii.

Christine's chin slips off her hand, jolting her awake.

"Dammit," she says, dabbing at her eyes, trying not to disturb her makeup and hoping that no one around them noticed her dozing off. She and McCoy are alone at their table; everyone else has wandered away, for food, for drinks, a few to dance, and she wonders how they had the energy to _move_.

For future reference, she thinks: big fancy banquets the night after enormous evacuation operations are probably not such a fantastic idea.

Beside her, McCoy lets out a snore.

She pokes him. "Hey," she says as he snort and blinks, and she knocks back a fortifying mouthful of fizzing pale-pink alcohol. She has no idea what's in it, but it's lethal and stimulating. Which is a plus right now.

McCoy sits up a little. "Oh my God," he says, putting a fist to his mouth to hide a yawn. Christine's head is already buzzing. "Are they still talking?"

"I think the speeches are over," she says, sitting her glass down with a solid _thunk_. "But they're all involved in a circle-jerk of awards and commendations up there. We're good."

His eyebrow raises, and he totally looks to the front of the room to see if she's being literal. She would never be so lucky, though: that might actually make for an interesting night.

Christine grins, and tilts her head.

"Kirk looks excited," she observes after a minute. At the head table, Captain Kirk is tugging at his collar, his eyes a little frantic. They've been threatening to promote him lately, and he is doing everything he can to avoid it, and any day now Christine is expecting him to instigate an interplanetary incident that will thoroughly put the kibosh on that line of conversation.

"We should probably go rescue Jim from himself," McCoy says half-heartedly, watching him, but he doesn't look all that enthusiastic at the prospect.

"True," Christine says thoughtfully, and while McCoy rakes a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it but just doing more damage, she puts down her drink and stands, settling her trailing skirt. She only wobbles a little. "Or you could come take a lonely girl for a spin."

There's a classic Earth song playing in the background — Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, something vaguely mellow and inoffensive. She trails her hand across his shoulders as she walks past, dropping a little sway into her hips, and he straightens under her caress. "Yes, _ma'am_," he murmurs, and the next thing she knows he is swiftly catching her around the waist and sweeping her into his arms and if she giggles, cheeks flushed, well, that she'll blame on the booze.

* * *

iii.

It is a swelteringly hot summer evening, and Christine has her feet up on the porch railing, lazily flapping her hat in her face, when music comes blaring out of the speakers set into the deck floor.

She briefly considers getting up and yelling at him, but decides it won't do to invite more sweatiness, and he comes out the front door anyway so she is content enough to yell at him from her seat.

"Good entertaining music, no?" he says, and oh, she knows he's just provoking her.

"No," she says firmly. "No cheesy twenty-second-century horribly synthesized big band revival music. You are an embarrassment, Leonard McCoy, not just to the medical profession but to me personally, I can't take you anywhere. Original flavor or no music at all, that's the rules around here."

His eyes are laughing.

"I mean it," she says, but her lips are twitching. "It's a dealbreaker. You can have this party all by yourself and I will sit upstairs and laugh at you from the windows. You keep that crap on and I am walking."

The look he gives her is pointed. She doesn't show signs of getting up from her low comfy chair any time soon. "You're walking, are you," he says teasingly, and in one fleet motion he pulls her to her feet and into a clumsy foxtrot, only trodding on her toes twice.

"It's too hot for this," she complains, but when he dips her she can't help laughing. Still bent over her, he lowers her lips to her throat, and she twines her arms around his neck and kisses him back, and his hand is just trailing dangerously high up inside her thigh when there is a commotion at the gate.

"Hello, guys," Sulu calls, "this thing's kind of stuck," and Christine gives a theatrically disappointed sigh. Before McCoy pulls her upright again he kisses her lightly and carelessly on her forehead.

"Later," he promises, and sets her back on her feet. Christine gives him a warning look, brushing herself down.

"That had better be a promise, mister," she says, and she pecks him on the cheek before she goes to the garden gate to rescue Sulu and Chekov and their lumpy casserole. As she walks barefoot through the grass she can hear McCoy humming away to the terrible music on the deck behind her.


End file.
